To ease the wait. I have a gallery of my D2X images from the trip on my website.

Yes, Karl. I am very happy. There is a picture of James on his website showing him with his new Seacam, grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. I have had a similar expression for most of the last two weeks!

Alex

Here are test shots of the camera's ability with a sunburst, and its 5 frames per second feature.

Great sunburst. How'd you make the second shot into one photo? Loads of layers...or???
Want to buy a kidney or two? Think i will have to sell mine to get the camera and housing.
You do know that marine biologists are all supposed to be poorly paid divemasters who can't afford that stuff don't you?(how am i supposed to add a smilie here?)

That is the best digital sunburst I've seen yet! Now, gotta try some shallow stuff to get sunrays.

Word from Seacam is that housings are close!

I agree that the D2X capability looks promising. But I would add that the conditions were far from ideal for sunbursts when I took the image above. The sea was very rough (the wind was so strong that our boat snapped one of its mooring lines) so the sun ball was very dispersed and there were no nicely focussed rays . Also, while I am making excuses, I didn't have long to take the shots because Peter Rowlands, who was on modelling detail, had his own pictures to take.

This image (below) was taken on my first dive with the D2X. The divesite offered no helpful foreground subjects, but at least the sea was calm enough for decent sunrays. I am very much looking forward to working more on sunrays when I am next in Cayman.

This image (below) was taken on my first dive with the D2X. The divesite offered no helpful foreground subjects, but at least the sea was calm enough for decent sunrays. I am very much looking forward to working more on sunrays when I am next in Cayman.

Alex

Ahhh - these sunbursts are much better than I expected. This may be the last camera I ever house

This was definitely a week for the arrow. Most of our dives were either deepish (shortish) wrecks or drift dives - rather than long, pottering-about-in-the-shallows photo dives. So I was very much taking snapshots. Even though we had permission to dive solo because the weather was rough and cold, for both safety reasons and so the other divers didn't freeze on the RIB, I always tried to stay nearish the group and to come up on time.

To give an idea, on this week long trip I made 16 dives with my D2X, totaling just over 15 hours underwater. On my last week long Red Sea trip in June I made 24 dives with my D100 , totaling over 27 hours underwater. I think that this shows the benefit of going on dedicated photographer trips rather than on standard dive trips. That extra time is what makes the difference between taking snapshots and creating exciting images. This is not a criticism of last week - which was great fun - and provided the diversity of diving (that you tend not to get on a phototrip) and that I wanted to test the camera. Its just an observation.

Thanks Alex for taking the time to post this information and photos. Using all the lenses and ports really helps too. The cleaner shot is a monster. I'd love to see a cropped for detail 16x20 of that one. Wow.